The Ultimate HOW-TO On Social Media Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses
We Know What You’re Here For. It’s Gotten Massive, Hasn’t It? We Know And We Can Help You Grow Too!
Social media has staggeringly grown over the past 10 years. Facebook on its own has more people than any country on Earth. The platform has equally evolved to accommodate the various celebrities, billionaires, business people, comedians and even Presidents that own a page or profile on it.
If you didn’t know already, this is where Facebook hit the gold (among a billion other reasons)!
Apart from Facebook, other giants in social media come with their own strengths promising to diversify how we communicate and seek entertainment. We’re talking Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and a zillion others!
These Platforms Have Given Birth To Successful Business People And You Might Be The Next One.
Small businesses have too many tools and platforms that promise to change their size overnight. Most times this requires them to spend thousands that they don’t have and time that will cost them much more. At Mr Flyer we believe in being as resourceful as possible, plus you can take our word for it because we’ve been there. Starting small helped us learn our capabilities and drew us to develop even more of those.
The tips for creating strategies shared below helped us to build our loyal following on social media and increase our sales drastically! Say goodbye to worrying about whom to approach for gigs because social media will do it for you. What’s the catch? You’ll have to do all the work yourself.
What are the perks, you ask?
- Saved money – Never will you be coerced to part with your hard-earned cash just because someone has a skill that is potentially lucrative for your business. No paying social media agencies to do what you can do yourself.
- Priceless skills gained – Social media and knowledge related to it are invaluable. This is the reason why there are social media consultancies around. With your new skills, you can share the information or add more to it. Tweaks to your business strategy online will be right at your fingertips!
- What you want is what you get – Nobody knows your business better than you do. Social media agencies may do a great job of deciphering your passion and end goal but none can perform and communicate with your consumers better than you. This DIY route gives you all the power to show the side of your business you wish to.
This list obviously doesn’t include all the benefits but these ones are pretty primary. And now for the tips!
That Unavoidable Social Media Audit
First things first, it’s important to be clear about where you’re trying to take your business. Are you a newbie in the business world? If your answer is yes, then your first step would be to figure out your buyer persona. This is a pseudo-fictional character that represents what your ‘perfect’ customer looks like. Features to include are behaviour patterns, preferences, motivations and even what their goals are. This helps you to be sure about who is readily interested in your services/goods and how you can appeal better to them. Facebook has a range of paid ads that can help you to advertise to only this group of people.
But, if you’ve already been in business for a couple of months or even years, then your audit should include your buyer persona and live data on whom your actual clients are right now. This helps you to see who is already paying attention to your products vis~a~vis your ideal customer.
This is also the point to figure out what the purpose of your business is. This will assist you in re-aligning your actions and efforts towards making that purpose a reality. A huge chunk of your online strategy is shaped by this factor.
If you’re a tool buff then use Socialbakers for that social media audit. It’ll help you spot what’s wrong with your social media presence and how you can fix it. This also comes with a neat feature you can use to spy on your competitors so you can steal ideas *wink wink*. Paying attention to your existing clients’ feedback on your service will also help you in picking out what needs to be adjusted or re-stocked.
Set A Spending Plan And Share Out Resources
Once you’re clear on what you’re trying to do with the business, now is the time to set aside money and resources for it.
This budget will hold all the goals which need to be fulfilled. These should reflect the level of priority so that resources are used where they are needed the most.
A new business might make a priority of gaining more followers for awareness whilst a more mature business will likely prioritize a loyal following.
Measuring Success
How you measure success is entirely up to you. This, of course, needs to tally with your main goals or purpose. Measures of success rarely stay the same throughout the lifetime of any business and that’s okay because it shows that the business is evolving.
Tracking your performance throughout your social media marketing efforts is vital. It’s an easier way of identifying your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and connecting them to the business’s purpose. Psdcenter approaches this perfectly when they say,
“Approach the “track, measure, and optimize” mentality. Begin by making a decision. Follow up the effect of actions and come up with a conclusion. Can it be effectively optimized? Or it must be done from the very beginning? Is the business choice delivering enough ROI? If not, leave it, and scale the process by multiplying the very same process that brought a satisfying ROI.”
Realistic Facts Will Always Push You Farther Than Any Gut Feeling In Marketing.
Tools, Tools, Tools!
The truth is, there is absolutely no way we can do social media marketing successfully and easily without social media marketing tools. Not just any tools will do but those that have proven their effectiveness over and over again. If time is your biggest problem in drafting a strategy then this will be your saving grace.
Tools will assist you in scheduling posts, responses and a whole lot more. They also come in handy when you need to see more specific analytics such as that competitor spying feature. Below are a few tools we recommend but you can always find better ones that’ll suit your needs.
Content Remains The Reigning King
Which other way would you have been able to do it, am I right? Content remains the only way you can communicate anything to your potential customers. Your content strategy includes your frequency in posting, choice of images and even brand voice. Figuring out what works for your audience and what they respond to better will help you to produce content that appeals to your target audience and nothing else.
Ideally, You Shouldn’t Put Out Any Content Before Drafting A Set Strategy. Remember Quality Over Quantity, ALWAYS. It’ll Gain Your Respect With Your Clients And Draw In New Ones.
So what content is effective? Simple!
- Content should evoke feelings. These feelings should range from sympathy, adoration and absolute happiness. Analytics show that people buy more from brands that they associate with happiness.
- It should be void of careless spelling mistakes and embarrassing grammar problems. It makes you look uneducated and unprofessional.
- It should be backed up by reliable sources or citations if needed
Test, Tweak And Evaluate
What’s working and what’s not so far? Is your content strategy yielding results? It’s completely okay to not get it right the first time. It’s a gradual process but it’ll get you where you want.
Test everything and figure out where the cracks are in your strategy. Are your ideal customers responding in the way you expected? Perhaps tweaking your posting time might do the trick? Keep track of everything so that’ll the tweaking and evaluating process makes more sense.
Experiment
Let’s do something different. You get to decide what your final step is. Set aside a budget to try out something totally new. This may be trying out a new platform or maybe even drafting a whole new strategy. Try out something very few brands are attempting and you just might be surprised.
Social media continues to evolve and the playing field isn’t always the same, neither are the rules. Bend the strategy a bit, go viral or approach a field such as TikTok that few businesses have gone to. Be the difference. It worked for Mr Flyer.
